her so. Mindful of my promise, and of the fact that a long run would greatly deteriorate the quality of my game, regarded from the point of barbecue, I pressed forward and broke into the herd to select and separate the particular animal I wanted. I knew it would be dangerous for Daisy to follow me here, her horse being of course entirely untrained for vaquero purposes, and told She replied: "Oh! I'm not in the least afraid! I've perfect control over Hadji!" I leaned over toward her saddle and whispered: "May I ask it as a particular favor to me, that you won't risk yourself?" This was a very simple thing to say, but the melting sea-shell pink of her cheeks deepened in hue as she heard it, and halting her Arab, replied: "Yes." The Captain, who had not yet succeeded in getting his nervous thorough-bred within ten rods of us, and Mr. Fitz Patrick, who had staid back with him for courtesy's sake, now rejoined her. The former smiled like the famous Spartan boy-or as that heroic boy probably would have smiled had there been a horse instead of a fox gnawing at his vitals-smiled and swore not. I so admired his fortitude and gallantry that I wished that there were ten different things which he knew how to do better than I, that I might compete with him in each and get beaten in all. I do not wish to diminish the glory of his self-fidence which he never betrayed by stampeding), control, but, as he afterward confessed to me, he had got through all his swearing before Miss Daisy returned to her father and himself. It consisted principally of ingenious imprecations on his own head, to take effect if he did not send his brute to Tattersall's the very day he got back to London. cheers with which my fortunate cast was recognized. Feeling this novel fillet about his brow, the ox put forth fresh energies. I let Cholooké press him closer, and gathered in several yards of slack, my end being held by half a dozen turns round the saddle-horn. Pressing still closer I came upon his flank, and dropped a bight of the lariat near his fore-feet. As he fouled one of them I reined Cholooké in. The horse had not forgotten his American training; "cœlum non animos," etc.—you know the restand instantly went down almost on his haunches, like a bird-dog, planting his four hoofs deep in the turf. The ox gave one tug-his very best |—but could not break the lariat nor pull Cholooké head over heels-the only way in which any good vaquero-horse can be upset. Of course my game was not aware of this last fact, so started to run sideways. Cholooké, without a hint from me, wheeled at once as on a pivot, and again put himself in exact line with the strain. This time the ox got inextricably fouled, and went down on his knees. Before he could consider himself and make an attempt to come up again Cholooké and I had thrice made his circuit, winding the lariat around him as long as it would last. I then dismounted, and leaving Cholooké without fastening of any kind (a con Five minutes more and I had separated my ox from the herd. My lasso whizzed as deftly as if it felt a pride in its national reputation, and "ringed" both horns of the steer. These were very broad, so I regarded that throw as the best and most difficult I ever made. There was a brown-eyed inspiration behind me! Though I had no time to bow my acknowledgment, I could distinguish a lady's voice in the proceeded to tie the steer's legs with little hopples of braided leather-rope, extemporized by myself that morning. Last, I got my lariat clear of him, coiled it once more around_my pommel, and returned to the knoll, where I received welcome from the brightest pair of eyes that ever rewarded a man for doing something so perfectly easy to him that he feels ashamed to be praised for it, and looks around nervously to see if somebody who knows what a humbug he is is not laughing at him. Because that somebody will, in all likelihood, read these pages, I skip all the congratulations I received and (with my habitual modesty) handed over to Cholooké, coming at once to our ride homeward. FIVE MINUTES LATE! FOR my love I've waited long while, as often I've done before; He's behind his appointed time, a minute, or two, or more. And shall whisper in Vincent's ear, "Five minutes, or more, you're late!" ARMADALE. BY WILKIE COLLINS, AUTHOR OF "NO NAME," "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," ETC. BOOK THE FOURTH. CHAPTER X. MISS GWILT'S DIARY. "...... July 21st, Monday night, eleven o'clock. -He has just left me. We parted by my desire at the path out of the coppice; he going his way to the hotel, and I going mine to my lodgings. "I have managed to avoid making another appointment with him by arranging to write to him to-morrow morning. This gives me the night's interval to compose myself, and to coax my mind back (if I can) to my own affairs. I say, 'if I can,' for I feel as if his story had taken possession of me, never to leave me again. Will the night pass, and the morning find me still thinking of the Letter that came to him from his father's death-bed? of the night he watched through, on the Wrecked Ship; and, more than all, of the first breathless moment when he told me his real Name? "Would it help me to shake off these impressions, I wonder, if I made the effort of writing them down? There would be no danger, in that case, of my forgetting any thing important. And perhaps, after all, it may be the fear of forgetting something which I ought to remember that keeps this story of Midwinter's weighing as it does on my mind. At any rate, the experiment is worth trying. In my present situation I must be free to think of other things, or I shall never find my way through all the difficulties of Thorpe-Ambrose that are still to come. yet. And the dark-haired Armadale, who has a poor little income which might perhaps pay his wife's milliner, if his wife was careful; who has just left me, persuaded that I mean to marry him; and whom-well, whom I might have loved once, before I was the woman I am now. "And Allan the Fair doesn't know he has a namesake. And Allan the Dark has kept the secret from every body but the Somersetshire clergyman (whose discretion he can depend on) and myself. "And there are two Allan Armadales-two Allan Armadales-two Allan Armadales. There! three is a lucky number. Haunt me again, after that, if you can! "What next? The murder in the timber ship? No; the murder is a good reason why the dark Armadale, whose father committed it, should keep his secret from the fair Armadale, whose father was killed; but it doesn't concern me. I remember there was a suspicion in Madeira at the time of something wrong. Was it wrong? Was the man who had been tricked out of his wife to blame for shutting the cabindoor and leaving the man who had tricked him to drown in the wreck? Yes the woman wasn't worth it. "What am I sure of that really concerns myself? "I am sure of one very important thing. I am sure that Midwinter—I must call him by his ugly false name or I may confuse the two Armadales before I have done-I am sure that Midwinter is perfectly ignorant that I and the little imp of twelve years old who waited on Mrs. "Let me think. What haunts me, to begin Armadale in Madeira, and copied the letters with? that were supposed to arrive from the West In"The Names haunt me. I keep saying and dies, are one and the same. There are not saying to myself: Both alike! Christian name many girls of twelve who could have imitated a and surname, both alike! A light-haired Al- man's handwriting and held their tongues about lan Armadale, whom I have long since known it afterward, as I did—but that doesn't matter of, and who is the son of my old mistress. A now. What does matter is, that Midwinter's dark-haired Allan Armadale, whom I only know belief in the Dream is Midwinter's only reason of now, and who is only known to others under for trying to connect me with Allan Armadale the name of Ozias Midwinter. Stranger still; by associating me with Allan Armadale's father it is not relationship, it is not chance, that has and mother. I asked him if he actually thought made them namesakes. The father of the light me old enough to have known either of them. Armadale was the man who was born to the And he said No, poor fellow, in the most innofamily name, and who lost the family inherit- cent, bewildered way. Would he say No, if he ance. The father of the dark Armadale was saw me now? Shall I turn to the glass and the man who took the name, on condition of see if I look my five-and-thirty years? or shall I getting the inheritance-and who got it. go on writing? I will go on writing. "So there are two of them-I can't help thinking of it--both unmarried. The lighthaired Armadale, who offers to the woman who can secure him eight thousand a year while he lives; who leaves her twelve hundred a year when he dies; who must and shall marry me for those two golden reasons; and whom I hate and loath as I never hated and loathed a man "There is one thing more that haunts me almost as obstinately as the Names. "I wonder whether I am right in relying on Midwinter's superstition (as I do) to help me in keeping him at arm's-length. After having let the excitement of the moment hurry me into saying more than I need have said, he is certain to press me; he is certain to come back, with THANKS TO THE THUNDER-[SEE DECEMBER NUMBER, PAGE 72.] a man's hateful selfishness and impatience in such things, to the question of marrying me. Will the Dream help me to check him? After alternately believing and disbelieving in it, he has got, by his own confession, to believing in it again. Can I say I believe in it too? I have better reasons for doing so than he knows of. I am not only the person who helped Mrs. Armadale's marriage by helping her to impose on her own father-I am the woman who tried to drown herself; the woman who started the series of accidents which put young Armadale in possession of his fortune; the woman who has come to Thorpe-Ambrose to marry him for his fortune now he has got it; and more extraordinary still, the woman who stood in the Shadow's place at the pool! These may be coincidences, but they are strange coincidences. I declare I begin to fancy that I believe in the Dream too! "Suppose I say to him, 'I think as you think. I say, what you said in your letter to me, Let us part before the harm is done. Leave me before the third Vision of the Dream comes true. Leave be. she? me; and put the mountains and the seas be- I might have written to him last night, if his tween you and the man who bears your name!' story had not been running in my head as it did Suppose, on the other side, that his love-has one defect, I know. It certainly keeps for me makes him reckless of every thing else? him out of the way, while I am casting my net, Suppose he says those desperate words again, and catching my gold fish at the great house which I understand now-What is to be, will for the second time-but it also leaves an awkWhat have I to do with it, and what has ward day of reckoning to come with Midwinter Suppose-suppose-if I succeed. How am I to manage him? What "I won't write any more. I hate writing! am I to do? I ought to face those two quesIt doesn't relieve me-it makes me worse. I'm tions as boldly as usual-but somehow my courfarther from being able to think of all that I age seems to fail me; and I don't quite fancy must think of, than I was when I sat down. It meeting that difficulty till the time comes when is past midnight. To-morrow has come already it must be met. Shall I confess to my diary that -and here I am as helpless as the stupidest wo- I am sorry for Midwinter, and that I shrink a man living! Bed is the only fit place for me. little from thinking of the day when he hears "Bed? If it was ten years since, instead of that I am going to be mistress at the great to-day; and if I had married Midwinter for love, house? I might be going to bed now with nothing heav- "But I am not mistress yet-and I can't take ier on my mind than a visit on tip-toe to the a step in the direction of the great house till I nursery, and a last look at night to see if my have got the answer to my letter, and till I know children were sleeping quietly in their cribs. I that Midwinter is out of the way. Patience! wonder whether I should have loved my chil- patience! I must go and forget myself at my dren if I had ever had any? Perhaps, yes- piano. There is the 'Moonlight Sonata' open, perhaps, no. It doesn't matter. and tempting me, on the music-stand. Have I nerve enough to play it, I wonder? Or will it set me shuddering with the mystery and terror of it, as it did the other day? "Tuesday morning, ten o'clock.-Who was the man who invented laudanum? I thank him from the bottom of my heart, whoever he was. If all the miserable wretches in pain of body and mind, whose comforter he has been, could meet together to sing his praises, what a chorus it would be! I have had six delicious hours of oblivion; I have woke up with my mind composed; I have written a perfect little letter to Midwinter; I have drunk my nice cup of tea, with a real relish of it; I have dawdled over my morning toilet with an exquisite sense of reliefand all through the modest little bottle of Drops which I see on my bedroom chimney-piece at this moment. 'Drops,' you are a darling! If I love nothing else, I love you. "My letter to Midwinter has been sent through the post; and I have told him to reply to me in the same manner. "I feel no anxiety about his answer-he can only answer in one way. I have asked for a little time to consider, because my family circumstances require some consideration, in his interests as well as in mine. I have engaged to tell him what those circumstances are (what shall I say, I wonder?) when we next meet; and I have requested him in the mean time to keep all that has passed between us a secret for the present. As to what he is to do himself in the interval while I am supposed to be considering, I have left it to his own discretion-merely reminding him that, in our present situation, his remaining at Thorpe-Ambrose might lead to inquiry into his motives, and that his attempting to see me again (while our positions toward each other can not be openly avowed) might injure my reputation. I have offered to write to him if he wishes it; and I have ended by promising to make the interval of our necessary separation as short as I "Five o'clock.-I have got his answer. The slightest request I can make is a command to him. He has gone-and he sends me his address in London. 'There are two considerations' (he says) which help to reconcile me to leaving you. The first is, that you wish it, and that it is only to be for a little while. The second is, that I think I can make some arrangements in London for adding to my income by my own labor. I have never cared for money for myself-but you don't know how I am beginning already to prize the luxuries and refinements that money can provide, for my wife's sake.' Poor fellow! I almost wish I had not written to him as I did; I almost wish I had not sent him away from me. "Fancy, if mother Oldershaw saw this page in my diary! I have had a letter from her this morning-a letter to remind me of my obligations, and to tell me she suspects things are all going wrong. Let her suspect! I sha'n't trouble myself to answer-I can't be worried with that old wretch in the state I am in now. "It is a lovely afternoon-I want a walkI mustn't think of Midwinter. Suppose I put on my bonnet, and try my experiment at once at the great house? Every thing is in my favor. There is no spy to follow me, and no lawyer to keep me out this time. Am I handsome enough to-day? Well, yes-handsome enough to be a match for a little dowdy, awkward, freckled creature, who ought to be perched on a form at school, and strapped to a back-board to straighten her crooked shoulders. "The nursery lisps out in all they utter; Besides, they always smell of bread and butter' "How admirably Byron has described girls This sort of plain unaffected letter-which in their teens! |